'It's too dangerous.'
'It's not dangerous. Not anymore.' He looked into the policeman's troubled eyes. 'This is between me and him.'
Mike was silent for a moment, his gaze searching, then he nodded, something like agreement or understanding entering his expression. 'All right,'
he said. 'But take this.' He handed Doug the gun. 'You know how to use it?'
Doug shook his head. 'Not really. But it doesn't matter. It won't work on him anyway. You know that.'
'Take it just in case.'
The whimper came again. It sounded like someone in pain.
'That's it --' Mike began, moving forward.
'No,' Doug said, grabbing his arm, pulling him back. 'I'm going in alone.'
The policeman stopped, stared at him, but did not move away. Doug held his gaze, hefted the revolver in his hand. 'I'll be okay.'
Mike nodded slowly. 'Okay,' he said finally. 'But we'll be right here if you need us.' The policeman's words were reassuring, his tone anything but. 'If I hear anything weird, I'm going in.'
'Got it.'
Doug stepped into the back room.
Into the lair of the mailman.
He glared at Doug from the rubble. Or, rather, _it_ glared at him. For the mailman now appeared only vaguely human. His body had shrunk, become thin and twisted and malformed like that of some giant insect. The red hair on top of his head, now blondish pink, had grown out tremendously and hung down in thick irregular tufts. His teeth looked overlarge in his caved-in head and sharp, as though they had been filed. Around him the desks and shelves, machines and bins, canvas bags and postal paraphernalia, were littered in a jumbled chaotic mess.
Behind Doug the door slammed shut.
The mailman laughed, a rasping chuckle that sent a shiver of primal fear down Doug's spine. The air was filled with a strange heaviness, a crackling eddying current of power that felt like charged electricity.
In the shifting emphasis of light caused by the closed door, Doug saw for the first time that he and the mailman were not alone in the room. In the far corner, against the wall, almost hidden by the shadow of a vertically overturned table, was an unmoving figure with wildly uncombed hair. The figure whimpered pitiably. Doug stepped forward until he could see a face.
Giselle Brennan.
His breath caught within him. Giselle was wrapped, mummy like, in brown packaging paper. One arm had broken free from the covering and was twisted at an unnatural angle, affixed to her side with rubber bands and encased in layers of folded orange and blue Express Mail envelopes. Blood had seeped through the wrapping in innumerable spots and had blackened and dried in even, regular stripes. Giselle's face, her neck and chin and cheeks, were crisscrossed with paper cuts, straight intersecting lines that sliced through skin and formed a field of squares, rectangles, parallelograms. Paper cuts also scored her lips, making it appear as though they had been sewn shut. One ear was torn off.
'Giselle,' Doug said, moving forward.
She moaned.
It was then that he saw on the white skin of her forehead several wavy lines of black ink protruding from a circle filled with writing.
The mark of cancellation.
From under her hairline he saw an even row of pasted stamps.
He turned on the mailman. 'What is this?' he demanded. 'What happened?
What the hell have you done to her?'
The mailman laughed again, the rasping sound as grating as that of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. 'Mail accident,' he said. His voice was a low whisper, barely recognizable.
'You bastard,' Doug breathed. He suddenly realized what the mailman had done. He had turned her into a package. A fucking package ready to be mailed.
The creature coughed. 'The Postal Service cannot be held responsible for injuries occurring as a result of delivered mail. If she had been injured as a result of her work, she would have been covered under federal employment statutes. But she is a part-time worker injured in anonjob related accident. I
have helped her as much as I can. I have bandaged her wounds. I can do no more.
Now it is up to you.' There was hunger in hisinsectile eyes. 'If you do not take her to the hospital immediately, she will die. It may already be too late.'
This time the young woman's moan was a word. 'Help.'
Doug stood unmoving, not knowing what to do. The seconds seemed like hours, endlessly long. He could almost hear them ticking off, one after the other. The room was still, silent, and so, he noticed, was the room out front, the town outside. Not a sound disturbed the perfect quiet. It was as if the whole world awaited his decision.
'Help me,' Giselle pleaded. Her voice was weaker than her moaning. Fresh blood spread over her chin from her serrated lips.
'She will die unless you save her,' the mailman whispered.
This was not something that could be decided quickly. This was not the sort of answer that could be decided byeeny-meeny-miney-moe , in which the outcome didn't matter. The outcome _did_ matter, and both the possibilities were wrong. He took a deep breath. If he had been a doctor, he might have been able to judge if recovery was possible or death inevitable, he might have been able to base his decision on knowledge and experience. But he knew nothing.
He needed time to figure this out. He needed time to ponder, analyze, study the situation.
But there was no time.
'Mr.Albin ,' the mailman whispered.
'Help,' Giselle pleaded.
Doug closed his eyes. Everything within him, his heart, his soul, all of those elements that made him human were telling him to get moving and take her to the hospital. But a stubborn core of icy resolve kept him from acting. If he helped Giselle, all would be lost. The mailman, obviously, was near death. This was merely a last gasp, a final attempt on his part to turn the tide. If Doug accepted this 'mail,' it might energize him enough that he might be able to really fight back. If mail's power was proportionate with its weight or value, Giselle was the equivalent of hundreds of checks and letters.
'Help me.'
He could not let her die. She might die anyway, but he could not be responsible for her death. It would mean sacrificing all of the work, all of the effort performed by himself and everyone else in town; it could even mean that the mailman would be restored to full power, free to kill other people. But Doug could not stand idly by and watch Giselle die. He had to take her to the hospital. By refusing to condemn her to death, he might be condemning others to death. But he had to take that chance.
He took a step forward. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mailman's skeletal arm trace a pattern in the air. He stopped, turning.
A tear rolled down Giselle's cheek, diverted by the paper cuts into increasingly smaller rivulets. 'Mr.Albin ,' she cried softly.
The mailman's twisted lips moved silently. His eyes wereclqsed .
'Don't let me die,' Giselle pleaded.
Her voice sounded different than usual, Doug noticed, more rhythmic, less natural, and there was something about her words that seemed stiltedly formal, which did not ring true. He looked from Giselle to the mailman and back again.
The mailman's head moved to the right.
Giselle's head moved to the right.
He stood unmoving, unsure of what to do.
